Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  As there should be, Conde thought, since we passed them out. But I shouldn’t be here, making a stupid speech in a language not my own. Can these Creole babblers even understand English? Or am I just wasting my time here?

  Yes, I am, he decided. I shouldn’t be here, wasting my time. I should be down at the docks trying to unfuck the mess we were left when all the workers failed to show up after their president’s little pseudo declaration of war.

  Note to self: Next time we invade a country, we need to cut it off from the internet, too.

  Conde mentally spat. And the army’s bitching up a storm that none of their shit’s been offloaded. Well, screw ’em. The navy supports us; the air force supports them. That’s the deal.

  Looking over the crowd, he wondered, Can I get some use out of these rabble, unloading the ships? Nah, if they’d had jobs they’d be at them. These are the career unemployables, most of them, who provide the illusion of mass to the revolution.

  Well, at least docking space isn’t a problem, thought the XO of the First Marine Brigade, Colonel de Castro, standing on the roof of a building not far from Stabroek Market and overlooking the river. The XO was in charge, for the nonce. This would stay that way until the next increment of troops showed up, along with the brigade commander.

  De Castro grimaced with annoyance. No, docking space isn’t an issue. Unfortunately, longshoremen are.

  Up to a point, things had gone well. Certainly the town had been seized easily. Then the ramped amphibs had come in, on the north side where the slope of the shore was suitable, and let loose their cargo.

  But that was almost all vehicles, some wheeled transport, yes, but more combat. We’ve got all the AMTRAKS, all the Engesas, all the Land Rovers, Tiunas, and M-151’s we can use.

  And a grand total of thirteen trucks, for almost two thousand of our people. And we need all of those, and twice as many trucks over, if we’re even going to live here, while the two thousand barely suffice for keeping order in the place and securing—lightly, be it noted—the town.

  Oh, sure, in a week or eight days the amphibs will come back, this time with lots more trucks and another thousand troops. And the brigade commander. Which will add to, rather than reduce, my problems.

  De Castro looked down at two thin and ragged lines, staggering down one of the gangways of one of the ships, and up the other. The former column then massed up in a gaggle as they tried to jam close enough to two standing trucks to get rid of their burdens

  Of course, it’s not as bad as all that. I have managed to pull out a couple of hundred of our people, to unload the ships by hand. And they’re managing to get to the dock a grand total of about a hundred and fifty tons a day. At that rate, the last of the ships we currently have in harbor will be unloaded, oh, in about three months.

  He scowled. A hundred and fifty tons a day. Which is more than enough to live on, true, since we only use up about twelve to fifteen tons. But it is not enough—not without a lot more trucks—to actually get anywhere. New Amsterdam and Linden? I’ve got a platoon in each, just enough to guard the flags we raised over the public buildings.

  God help us if the air bridge doesn’t hold up and we have to use what little transport we have to support the fucking army.

  God help us, too, if we can’t get the food flowing to the civilians again. They’re about out of held stocks and when that runs out we’re going to need to bring into port a thousand tons a day for them alone. On the plus side, when we tell them “unload or starve,” we’ll probably get the dock workers back.

  But I shudder to think of the problems when I have to start into the food wholesale business. And, now that I think of it, what are their merchants going to do for money, since the Guyanan dollar has become worthless? Wish we had thought of that.

  Note to self: call the brigade commander and ask him to get us sent about half a billion Bolivars and an accountant team to do currency exchanges.

  Kaieteur International Airport, Guyana

  It was international because of both regularly scheduled, plus frequent charter, flights from Venezuela and Brazil, and sometimes Montreal, Quebec. For something in the middle of the jungle, the airfield was not unimpressive, at ninety-six hundred feet and fully asphalted. More impressive still was the reason for its being there, the seven-hundred and forty-seven foot falls to the southeast. Nor was the Kaieteur Falls a mere trickle; it dumped over twenty-three thousand cubic feet of water down to the Potaro River every second. One could hear the roar even at the airport, six kilometers away. When the wind was right, one could hear it even through the walls of the austere guest house the commander of the brigade, Colonel Camejo, had commandeered for his headquarters.

  “You know what bugs me, Sergeant Major?” the rather tall and eager-looking Camejo asked.

  Straight-faced, Zamora, the brigade’s senior noncom answered, “If it isn’t that while the goody-two-shoes Marines and Hugo’s pets, the paratroopers, got priority on everything, with us getting whatever was left over, or that while they got plussed up to strength while we’re sitting at under sixty percent, or that we get one lousy C-130 lift every other day, which brings barely enough to eat, or that the helicopters got so overworked the last week that instead of eighty percent of them being up, eighty percent are back at Tumeremo and down, for maintenance, or that those fat bureaucrats in Caracas still haven’t finished cutting contracts for air charters …other than those things, sir, no, I can’t imagine what’s bugging you.”

  “Nobody likes a cynic, Sergeant Major,” Camejo intoned, waving a disapproving finger.

  At Zamora’s raised eyebrow, Camejo added, “I understand the first charter is due in here, today. From Rutaca Airlines. Don’t know what kind of plane it will be.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it, sir. And it will probably be a biplane they dug out of a museum.”

  Camejo chose to ignore that. Instead, he said, “What bugs me is that we have absolutely no contact with the enemy.” He waved to the northeast, in the direction of Ebini Hills and the presumptively gringo base there. “There are five thousand of the bastards down there; so intelligence says, anyway, and we have not clue one what they’re doing.”

  Zamora shrugged. Well, of course we don’t. Finding out would take some troops moving, and that would require lift we just don’t have. No sense in saying that though, the colonel already knows it.

  Instead, Zamora said, “On that note, we’ve got a bevy …well, more of a horde, really …of civilians coming up the road to Lethem, on the Brazilian border.”

  “How many?”

  “The air force’s best guess is maybe eight thousand.”

  “Shit. We can’t feed them.”

  It was not insignificant that neither Zamora nor his chief even thought of the possibility of taking the civilians hostage, to force the surrender of the troops at the camp. They were civilized men and even, in their own eyes at least, vanguards of civilization.

  “Oh, hell, no, sir,” Zamora agreed. “Thing is, we don’t seem to have to. Somebody laid out stockpiles for them, about every three-days’ march. They’ve been living on those. I put a guard on the one that’s right under Mahdiana Eagle Mountain, to keep our own people from pilfering it.”

  “Good thought,” Camejo commended. His face grew momentarily troubled. “Odd, isn’t it, Sergeant Major that someone …”

  Whatever he was about to say, the colonel was interrupted by the sound of a heavy jet, passing low overhead and straining its engines in a turn. The two rushed outside and looked up, just as a big, lumbering Boeing 737 was making its final run onto the airfield. The jet had “RUTACA,” in big blue letters, painted on the side.

  “So shoot me; I was wrong,” said Zamora sullenly.

  Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

  The smell of burning feces—worse than either the human waste or the mixed in diesel, alone, would have been—was everywhere. At least it was everywhere Carlos and Lily could get to, between his having to drag the half-full, o
diferous barrels to the burn area, while she had to tote twenty-liter cans of fuel, mix it in, torch it off, and stir the mixture as it burned.

  “Well …there’s one thing, one good thing,” Lily admitted, as Carlos let go the latest overfull barrel of waste, jumping out of the way, backwards and fast, to avoid the splash.

  “What’s that, hon?”

  She had tears running down her face, not from the work but from the smell and the fumes. She wiped those away, leaving a series of dirty streaks on her skin. “There’s nothing like burning shit to take away a case of the hornies.”

  “Where you’re concerned, lover,” Carlos answered, with a leer, “even that isn’t enough.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Fetchez la vache!”

  —Monty Python and The Holy Grail

  MV Maria Walewska, Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

  The port pilot’s own launch had been released on Liu’s promise that he’d have the pilot brought back to port in his own boat. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be coming with us,” Kosciusko told the port pilot, Carver, standing in temporary command on the bridge. Carver was an American, a former merchant skipper—a former naval officer, too—who’d elected to settle down with one of the local girls. They knew of each other, but only by reputation.

  With Kosciusko were two armed guards. Liu, standing beside the pilot, reached over and flicked off the radio as soon as the leader of the regiment’s naval squadron made his appearance. Besides the guard, there was a uniformed sapper, Sergeant Collins of the Engineer Company. To him, Kosciusko said, “You may man your engine, Sergeant. Commence fire at my command.”

  “Yessir,” Collins replied, giving a hasty salute and racing off the bridge to the reassembled trebuchet that sat in the reformed cavity made of the containers.

  “Captain Liu, have the flag of Guyana run up, then take us out.”

  “You sure you no want Jorry Logah?”

  The Countess already had her dispensable cargo laid out. At the stern were two ex-Yugoslav M-70, four 240mm shells, and seven thirty-gallon barrels, all fused, all programmed, and all set to be armed. These rested on two broad beams the crew had turned into a roll-off system, of sorts, that they’d salvaged from scrap in the “lumber” container. A stack of half meter by three millimeter steel dummies sat off to one side.

  To port and starboard, each side, were another four shells and six barrels. These sat right on the edge of the gunwale, waiting to be heaved over. These, too, had their dummies standing by.

  In the center was the turntable mounted trebuchet, aimed for now to port. Six shells and six barrels waited in a line, off to one side.

  The shells weighed nearly three-hundred pounds, with adaptors and destructor kits. And the explosive-filled thirty-gallon drums they’d thrown together for more blast effect, deeper, were four-hundred and thirty. Even for a trebuchet, this was a lot, and didn’t give all that much range.

  Fortunately, it didn’t have to give much. The objective was mainly to scatter them, so that no precise line could be calculated from finding two of them and matching it to the ship’s course.

  “Stern?” Kosciusko asked, over a small, handheld, short-ranged radio.

  “Here, Skippah,” came the answer.

  Hmmm. What’s Mrs. Liu doing back there? Oh, well, if she can load precisely, she can unload as well.

  “You may commence unloading in the sequence as given.”

  “Aye, aye, Skippah! We fucking staht now.”

  “Port side, starboard side; begin sequence now.”

  “Aye, sir …aye, aye, Commodore.”

  “Sergeant Collins?”

  “Here, sir.”

  “Your target one and target two are coming up on the port. Fire as she bears.”

  “Yessir.”

  It wasn’t a classical trebuchet, since it lacked a counterweight. Neither was it an onager, which relied on the power of torsion in the form of twisted skeins. Instead, the motive power came from a battery of six helical springs, attached to a welded-on crosspiece at the bottom of the lever, above, and to the frame, below. These were already at full extension, and practically humming with the urge to release.

  At the other end of the lever was a hook. From the hook hung a steel eyebolt, from which a cable ran. Just below it, from another eyebolt, this one affixed to the beam, ran another section of cable. Still below that was another cable, this one hung on a hook and running through a shackle to a power winch. A rope led off from the hook to one of the Chinese-born sailors, Yee.

  Both of those upper cables led to a net of steel mesh, laid out under the crosspiece of the lever. Inside the net, laid transversely, was a single 240mm shell, with an odd extension screwed into the fuse well.

  Collins had already set the arming delay and the counter, electronically, using a kit supplied by Victor and his Israeli pals.

  “We’re ready,” Collins said to himself, with no small amount of pride.

  “Yee?” he asked.

  “Yes, Sa’gin?”

  “At my command.”

  “Yes, Sa’gin.”

  The ship was picking up speed, if only slightly. Collins ran to an eight foot ladder, previously placed against and tied off to one of the surrounding containers, and scaled it. The ladder was set off well to one side, because, You never really know, do you?

  Above the ladder’s top, on the container, Collins had also put down two cans of food, still filled, that he’d earlier scrounged from the galley and emplaced to define a line parallel to the swing of the trebuchet’s beam. Next to those was a single night vision scope.

  He flicked it on. The navy never got the best of such things, of course, since they didn’t need them. This one was old, Gen One, technology. It whined, most annoyingly.

  Sighting that along the cans, Collins saw the grainy green image of the opening of one of the port’s sub-harbors, his “target one.”

  “Fire,” he said.

  Yee pulled the rope, which twisted the hook off its restraining eyebolt. Now freed, the lever swung up, dragging the net and the shell with it. The netted shell, accelerated by the swing, arced out and then up. The top hook kept the net in control until it was just past apogee. Then the net’s eyebolt let go of the hook, releasing the mine to sail forward and onward. The springs groaned and whined with their torture, as the upright lever hit its padded stop, making the entire contraption shudder.

  Collins just caught the spash, about two hundred meters away, and perhaps fifty inward, past the mouth of the sub-port.

  “Reload,” he shouted, as one of the sailors rolled a plastic barrel up to a convenient load point, and Yee scrambled up the framework to reattach his hook. The long steel lever began to descend as the winch turned. As the beam reached the reload point, Collins was sure he heard a splash from the port side of the ship.

  The RSM is absolutely right, thought Collins, with satisfaction. It’s been all downhill since Varus lost his legions and his eagles.

  Two Venezuelan sailors, wearing brassards indicating a certain police authority, walked the dock by which three of Venezuela’s five frigates were tied. The frigates had come back, after escorting the amphibious ships back to harbor. From here they would return to Georgetown, after the transports picked up a largish chunk of First Marine Brigade’s wheels. The lack of those trucks was seriously hampering the effort to spread out over settled Guyana from Georgetown.

  “Did you hear something?” one of the sailors asked of the other.

  The other shook his head. “Something like what?”

  “I dunno …a kind of an odd clang. Can’t recall ever hearing anything like it before.”

  The second sailor again shook his head. “No, not really. Probably some construction going on further into town. You know how the harbor distorts and carries sound.”

  “Yeah, but this was really odd. Like …oh …maybe a chunk of metal hitting wood at really high speed, with a sort of aerial buzz tossed in t
here somewhere, too.

  “Aha, there it is again,” the first sailor insisted, “coming from that freighter just pulling out of port.”

  “Maybe,” the second one half-agreed. “But ships are always making odd sounds.”

  “And I think I heard a splash. A big one.”

  “Now there you’re imagining things. A splash in port? Oh, my, that’s ever so unusual.”

  The second sailor, who was actually the senior of the pair, consulted his watch and said, “C’mon, let’s get back to the guard shack for our relief.”

  “Bring us around north for two miles and then head east, Captain,” Kosciusko commanded, as the ship eased out of the harbor. “We’ve got a lot more mischief to do before we turn ourselves in.”

  Carver, the American-born pilot, still on the bridge and watching events with keen interest, asked, “Um …what happens to me?”

  “You’ll be freed as soon as we turn ourselves in for internment at Trinidad.” Kosciusko shrugged. “Assuming they believe us when we tell them you’re a captive rather than one of us.”

  “Yeah, but what are the odds?”

  Naughtius, Waini River, Guyana

  The sub had doffed her thin disguise, back at what passed for a base. Now, just a couple of meters below the surface, with only her periscope showing, she cruised a very sedate three knots. Inside her, along with her four-man crew, sailed Biggus Dickus Thornton, Eeyore Antoniewicz, two M-70 mines, two thirty-gallon barrel mines, and two 240mm shells, all fused and almost armed.

  I really don’t like this poor, worn out excuse for a commando sub, Biggus Dickus mentally bitched. He had to keep his complaints unvoiced; there was no sense in worrying the men.